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Thus Spake Zeigler
The unchanging heart of storytelling
In September 2014, I was asked to
present my thoughts on the art of
storytelling and the power of creativity
at the Asian MICE Forum, a business
conference that was held in Taiwan.
With a 650-strong audience from a vast
range of industries, I spoke about the
brand story and why every organisation
should have one.
Storytelling is part of our human
culture. It’s how we have evolved and
survived as humans – and in this social
media world of 140 character updates
– it’s more important than ever before.
Many have said that with social media,
storytelling is dying. Storytelling is far
from dying. Social media lets everyone
tell stories in a whole new way. We are
all storytellers.
Winston Churchill once said, “If you
want me to speak for two minutes, it
will take me three weeks of
preparation… if you want me to speak
for an hour, I am ready now.” One of
the West’s most impressive leaders…
I wonder how he would have used
social media to persuade his audiences
today
In the States, every few days, more
than a billion tiny stories are generated
by people around the world on Twitter.
These tweets are being archived by the
library of Congress. Its mission – to tell
the story of America – 170 billion posts
and counting. We are all storytellers.
The way a message is disseminated
may have changed, but the importance
of the foundation of a story has not
changed and will never change.
Bill Bernbach, our founder, knew this
sixty years ago. In a talk on the future
of advertising, he spoke about new
inventions and not to rely too heavily on
them, because they are not going to
create a great new idea. He said,
“Getting an idea is far more important
than all the technology in the world.”
That’s because mankind’s obsessive
and eternal drivers have not changed
and will likely never change.
At a time when we are bombarded with
information, when we have a choice,
and I think we do have a choice – of
what to read… and more importantly
what to share… storytelling is more
important than ever before.
Jonah Sachs, who wrote ‘Winning the
story wars’ believes social media has
taken humans back to the origins of
storytelling.
Oral Tradition
(Nearly all of human history)
everyone owns ideas
messages move through
social networks
survival of the fittest
stories dominate
In the oral tradition when we were
Broadcast
ideas are exclusive
property of the creator
messages broadcast
one to many
survival of the richest
many ways to speak
to captive audiences
The concept of survival of the fittest is
important for businesses today. In the
broadcast era, if you spent enough
media dollars you could get your
message out to the masses.
Now, as like our distant past, the
crowd decides whether a story lives or
dies, is shared or dropped. It needs to
capture someone’s attention and it has
to touch them with emotion. They need
to care. Care enough to remember the
message for it to connect in the first
place, care enough to want to pass it
on and care enough to change their
own behaviour.
We need to balance our obsession with
technology and get back to telling
compelling stories. To succeed brands
will continue to need a compelling and
consistent story based on human
insights that move and excite the
consumer.
Social media, the internet and
technology are great state-of-the-art
tools to disseminate messages, but the
power of storytelling resides in ‘state-of
the-heart’ and that’s something that I
am pleased will never change.
Digital era
everyone owns ideas
messages move through
virtual social networks
survival of the fittest
stories dominate
The ability to tell stories has changed
immeasurably with tools such as
twitter, facebook, WeChat and Weibo.
Just these four channels alone have a
combined universe of nearly four billion
people… more than half the world’s
population. The ability to convey a story
created in one place to an audience in
another – on the other side of the world
– in seconds is mind blowing.
sitting in our caves, we were drawing
on walls and we owned our ideas.
In the broadcast era, ideas were the
exclusive property of the creator.
And now, we’re moving back to
everyone owning their own ideas again.
We are moving back to the era
where messages are shared through
social networks.
John Zeigler,
Chairman & CEO / DDB Group
Asia Pacific, India, Japan
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